News Watch: Case of the missing daughter

Case of the missing daughter
Unwanted — that’s the plight of the girl child in many parts of India. It doesn’t quite matter where she lives — in a shanty or mansion, a village or city, India or Canada — she’s often a minority, perched precariously between life and death.

Child Deaths Down, But Still Too Many: UNICEF
The report, entitled, "State of the World's Children 2008," points out that each day at least 26,000 children under the age of five die from preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria.

Data and statistics on education in India

Mother and Child
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/Mother_and_Child/articleshow/2725901.cms
Of the 9.7 million child deaths worldwide annually, one-third occur in India. Unesco's 2008 report on the state of the world's children presents an acutely embarrassing picture of infant and child mortality in the country.

The starvelings
Hunger has an even bigger impact on children's health than was thought. Hunger causes disease as well as death. According to the Lancet, malnutrition in the first two years is irreversible. Malnourished children grow up with worse health and lower educational achievements. Their own children also tend to be smaller.

When hunger kills
Of the ones that are lucky enough to survive, 8.3 million are babies born underweight. The situation worsens as these babies grow older. Every third child who is underweight, and under five, in the world is an Indian.

Community to be involved in bringing children to school
The larger community needs to be convinced that it is a “vibrant player” in ensuring educational access to all, she added. Though the number of out-of-school children had gone down from 10 lakh in 2000 to about one lakh in 2007, those who had remained out of the ambit of SSA programmes were “a matter of serious concern”, said Ms. Sharma.

Where is the space for children?
Article 31 of UN convention on child rights state, “Every child has a right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.” However, fulfillment of this right is a dubious dream.

Media Watch - Children of a lesser god?

Sources: Business Standard, TOI, RXPGnews, HT, Hindu

Children of a lesser god?
In cities and towns like Mumbai, Agra, Kanpur, Firozabad and Moradabad, to name just a few, where one face of Indian youth is flourishing in the multiplex-mall culture, there is another side where children in the same age group are probably working 18 hours in factories which fail to provide even basic comfort levels.

Give details of missing kids: HC to DGP
Taking serious note of 712 children missing from various areas in the state for the last one year, the Allahabad High Court directed the DGP to provide their disaggregate district-wise gender and age details on the next date.

When street kids smile through the lens
The exhibition titled 'Children of the world', being held in the city, has 40 photographs of street children from nine countries, including India. It is not the usual kind of exhibition where you step around to look at the portraits on the walls.

CBI to inquire into alleged child adoption racket
The Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), an autonomous Body under the Ministry of Women & Child Development, responsible for keeping a check on international adoption has suspended Preet Mandir's license last July after the with immediate effect after it was reported that the adoption home was allegedly involved in selling babies to foreigners for $12,000.

New light on child labour
Highlighting the plight of children working in hazardous industries, the film intends to sensitise society and the parents who send their young children to work in order to "augment" their income.

Media Watch - 5 kids will go missing the next hour

Sources: TOI, Hindu, NYTimes, HT, IE, Indiatogether, Hardnewsmedia, Indian Catholic, NDTV

200 bonded labourers freed in Hazaribagh
Nearly 100 child labourers along with another 100 bonded adults including women, were freed from a brick kiln near Ramgarh in Hazaribagh district on Saturday and brought to Ranchi from where they boarded trains to their respective states.

Girl child unspoken curse
The situation has worsened since 2003, when ultra-sonography and sex-determination technology became accessible to the remotest parts of Chambal, one of the most backward areas in the country.

Beyond punishment
A considerable body of research shows that corporal punishment can never make a child learn or behave better. Yet, the practice is widely prevalent.

Even Amid Its Wealth, India Finds, Half Its Small Children Are Malnourished
In this young nation, where 40 percent of the people are under 18, figures released by the government on Friday offered an alarming portrait of child health: Among children under 3, nearly half are clinically underweight, the most reliable measure of malnutrition.

Website to track missing children launched
Launched by Don Bosco National Forum for Youth at Risk in association with UNICEF, www.missingchildsearch.net will be closely watched and monitored by child welfare organisations in all major cities in the country and a search will be generated immediately.

Largest children population state lagging in childcare
child security had become an important concern in the post Nithari scenario but the issue was a broader one, involving the rights of the young child in the framework of security, protection, development and participation.

Ultrasound may result in `misguided treatment'
The available imaging technologies employed during pregnancy may not always be accurate, and therefore, may not enable correction of birth defects, feels a group of dedicated paediatric surgeons.

Flesh trade to beggar mafia: Mumbai capital for missing children
Maximum city Mumbai is also number one when it comes to missing children. In 2006 alone, Mumbai’s missing minor registers recorded 948 children as untraced.

5 kids will go missing the next hour
In fact, missing children is the veritable black hole in law-enforcement. As an investigative series from several states will show, just like Nithari, where police failed to even acknowledge the problem, elsewhere, too, the typical police response is: the missing child is the parents’ problem, not ours.

Paying a steep price for motherhood
The deaths come at a time when the state government of Madhya Pradesh is strongly advocating institutional deliveries as the mantra to combat high rates of maternal deaths in the state. Unfortunately in the state the campaign exists in the advertisement hoardings, newspaper advertisements and in media, thanks to efforts of public relation department of the state.

Indian PM meets 9-is-Mine delegates
20 children led the 9-Is-Mine delegation to the Prime Minister on 1st February, 2006. The Prime Minister received them at his residence on 7 Race Course Road, and spent exclusive time with the children.

Nithari’s Auschwitz
How many more Nitharis will have to happen to change the way the police and administration function in our ‘incredible, superpower’ India? Are the children of the poor in India eternally condemned in abject poverty, often homeless, without a childhood, trapped as child labour and now guinea pigs of perverse psychopaths, murdered and raped and chopped up in many parts, while the stunningly insensitive nexus of the police and the government plays footsie?

Children in India yearn for better future
India’s constitution is termed as best written human rights documents with several articles on children’s welfare and development. Alas, despite quantum jump on several fronts during last five decades most children are yet to become national priority and many provisions remains on the papers only

Corruption in ICDS schemes
The villagers say the Anganwadi centre does not function and the anganwadi worker goes missing for most part of the year. For example, it's already 9.30 and it's still closed. It's supposed to open at 7.

Media Watch - 18 million street children and Nithari surprises you?

18 million street children and Nithari surprises you?
Paedophilia in Goa, organ trafficking in Nithari, gang rape in Bhiwandi - it's just the first week of the year. I think we need more than a dance on stage and a hush hush bash. We need schools

Child tracking system on govt radar to slash missing cases
The UNICEF has also come up with a proposal for child tracking system, with a pilot-testing project already underway in Lalitpur district in Bundelkhand region. According to UNICEF officials, the project revolves around maintaining a baseline date related to children and, also, providing and assisting in all services for children.

Child murders show India's poor live below justice
"The police said 'you people just give birth to children and leave them on the streets -- and then you want police to find them when they go missing'", Lal said, outside the house where his daughter's skull, bones and clothes were found eight months later.

Noida — The mirror of Indian society
What is worrying about the Nithari killings is that nobody seems to have fully understood that Noida holds a mirror up to Indian society in which we should all be able to see our faces. In that mirror, if we dare to look, we will see a society that has long accepted that India is a country in which there are civil privileges and not civil rights.